


She Burns Like Oil On Water

by klin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Roxy/Jane, Slight timeline divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klin/pseuds/klin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past week feels like a blur. There was candy - then you were imprisoned, and Jane’s mind was hijacked by the Batterwitch - and then fighting and chaos and you on the ground, staring up at Jane’s flat eyes, past the points of her trident - and then those crimson points descending, tearing, penetrating -</p><p>Rose does her best to distract you, to coax you through the recovery process (this Godtier business isn't all it's cracked up to be), even while unresolved feelings lie between you like a sleeping tiger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Burns Like Oil On Water

**Author's Note:**

> Spiritual successor to my previous fic She Burns Like Foxfire. Reading it is not necessary to follow this one.

For the first time in months, you’re safe. You’re safe, and you’re alive, and your friends are safe and alive, and everything is blissfully quiet - so quiet that you can feel your blood thrumming underneath your skin, your pulse stuttering at your neck, your ribs creaking as your lungs inflate; all proof that you are so fucking alive.

The past week feels like a blur. There was candy - then you were imprisoned, and Jane’s mind was hijacked by the Batterwitch - and then fighting and chaos and you on the ground, staring up at Jane’s flat eyes, past the points of her trident - and then those crimson points descending, tearing, penetrating -

you shiver and wrap your arms tighter around your middle, like you are the only thing keeping your insides from spilling out, from bursting at the seams, from bulging out of the red, raw holes left by that awful -

your fingers curl into your ribs, hard enough to leave purple bruises.

There’s no point in dwelling on the past, right?

(Even if the past is still evident in the ache of flesh and the white bandages wrapped around your torso.)

You’re not entirely sure where you are now. You remember your mom/daughter/something cradling you with the yellow of her sleeves billowing around you like clouds streaked with sun. Then the darkness of oblivion. And then this room and this house.

A very clean, very normal house, if you ignore the wizards everywhere.

And if you ignore your mom/daughter/something.

Your mom/daughter - Rose, that is, has been a constant presence since you gained consciousness. You still flush to think of her sitting on the edge of your bed as you balled up fists in your pillow and wailed and sobbed, though not for any particular reason. Coming back to life isn’t a pleasant experience, Rose had spoken softly, almost clinically, to you, as your head and guts struggled to rearrange themselves in your newly restored body. You gnashed your teeth into white down as she shooshed you, her precise and calculating presence an anchor to your not-yet-grounded consciousness; and then you gnashed your teeth into her arm when she attempted to wrest the tortured pillow from you.

You still remember the taste of salt on her skin. You still remember the crescent moons tattooed against her forearm when she jerked away. And especially, you still remember the pity in her eyes that sent you burrowing underneath the covers to convulse and groan in the indifferent darkness, even as she remained sentinel at your bedside.

God, you’re a mess.

That was days ago, anyway. You and she have both resolved not to talk about that brief period where you were unarguably out of your mind. Additionally, neither of you mention the time you said, “Yes, mom,” dripping with sarcasm, as she nagged you about something or other; or discuss the way you both froze after that, suddenly cold and brittle and fragile, and ached for something that the other could never provide.

God, you’re both messes.

By now, you’ve settled back into your body enough that Rose lets you stagger from your room to the living room, where you drape yourself across the couch. Moving still feels unnatural, like your skin is too tight or your bones too heavy. You know nothing is different, nothing changed in those brief moments when your consciousness left your body and then was jerked back in, but it still feels like it. This Godtier business isn’t all that it’s made out to be.

“Do you ever watch anything other than cartoons?” Rose asks. You hadn’t heard her approach, but now she stands just behind the couch, one eyebrow arched in distaste as she regards the screen.

“Nope,” you respond as cheerfully as you can, though emotions, too, seem abnormal, like misfitting masks. “And anyway, that’s the only thing on.” You jab at the buttons on the remote, but every channel features some sort of cartoon. “How do you even have cable, anyway? We’re on an uninhabited planet.”

Rose turns her discerning stare to you. “You’re the scientist,” she says. “And the planet is very much inhabited.”

“Your salamander things don’t count. Neither do your wizards.” Your lips curl up distastefully. “What’s up with them, anyway?”

Canned laughter fills the next beat.

“You put them there,” Rose says.

You clutch the remote so hard that you think it should snap. It doesn’t. You jab the “power” button and the TV fizzles out. You see you and Rose reflected in the glossy black screen; the sight fills you with heat. You’re not sure if it’s entirely anger, but it sets your teeth together.

“You know Jane’s been asking about you,” Rose continues seamlessly. “You aren’t answering her messages. She’s concerned.”

“Yeah, well,” you grouch, tossing the remote on the cushion beside you, “I’m not ready to deal with that clusterfuck yet.” You immediately regret your words. Jane doesn’t deserve that. “Not that - not that Janey is a clusterfuck. I mean. I am. Or my feelings about her. They’re a clusterfuck.” You shove the remote off the couch with a bare foot, a small, if petty expression of your frustration.

“You can’t hide here forever,” Rose’s voice is barely more than a vibration.

“I thought that was the plan. Hiding.”

Rose cracks a twinge of a smile. “Just for a little while. Not forever.”

 

 

The next day, you feel surprisingly better. More composed. Less like a jigsaw puzzle glued together incorrectly and more like one that’s just a little jumbled.

You message Jane on Pesterchum but receive no response for the hour that you sit with the laptop in your lap and anxiety in your gut. Rose later informs you that Jane is on a Super Important Mission. Just fact-gathering, she adds when your face contorts in a dangerous way. Just reconnaissance. Nothing risky. Her assurances don’t quell the fear knotting around your organs.

  
  


The day after that, you have a relapse. You wake up before the sun, and the darkness is smothering. The silhouettes crowding the room warp into grotesque faces. grinning skulls and wax heads melting into horrible visages that sneer at your flushed chest, your bloodless face, your sticky sweat.

When you see your own reflection in the vanity mirror, you lose it.

You leap out of bed and slam your palm against the light switch and turn so that your back is pressed against the closed door. Light floods the nightmare scene and restores everything to perfect normality, but the terror persists, clawing its way out of your stomach and into your bloodstream. You begin to doubt the light. It’s too - too bright, too sharp, too real, like repeating a word over and over until it loses all meaning. The light, yeah, the light is like that - just the darkness biding its time, trying to trick you - trying to catch you off guard -

maybe it’s you who is losing meaning.

You inhale deeply, and the rush of oxygen refreshes you just enough for you to open the door and dive into the hallway toward safety.

Instinct drives you into Rose’s room. Instinct tells you that Rose is safe.

(Much later, Rose would wonder aloud whether you sought her out because you still viewed her as your mother and therefore as invulnerable to the eldritch horrors in the dark. That’s not it. She had ceased being ??ecto-mom?? sometime between your regaining consciousness and her feeding you Rice Krispy treats after a particularly rough day. You don’t offer any alternate hypotheses.)

You do not pause in her doorway. You do not recollect yourself and return to your room like any sane person would. You instead swallow a sob as you cross the threshold into her room because in that instant, you feel safe.

Rose stirs at your approach but does not fully wake until you nudge her shoulder a couple times. The light creeping under the door reflects against her bleary eyes as she blinks up at you. Her face does not distort in the dark.

“Yes, Roxy?” she asks, apparently unperturbed by your visit.

You keep two fingers, used to nudge her awake, pressed against her. The touch anchors you. “I’m scared.” You don’t feel your mouth move; the words just drip from your lips, effortless and god, do you really sound that small? Like a mouse huddled in the shadow of a beast.

(Except there’s no shadow in here, no beast. Rose is safe. Rose is safe.)

Without speaking - which is a miracle in itself - Rose scoots over to make room. You immediately occupy that sliver of space, curling your body into the arms she opens. The two of you fit together better than you fit with yourself, and you know there’s probably something unhealthy about that, but you’re not ready to face your issues tonight.

Eventually, when you’ve stopped shaking and the tears - where did those come from? - dry on your cheeks, you roll over so that your back is to Rose. You feel her shift, preparing to put distance between the two of you, and your chest clenches. You grab her wrist and tug her arm back around you, silently pleading for her to stay.

She does. She scoots closer so that her forehead rests against your shoulder. The way her breath stirs your hair and the warmth of her palm, resting against your stomach, and her body curving around yours…

You fall asleep like slipping into a warm bath.

When the morning sun drives you awake, there is only an empty space beside you where Rose once lay. You remove yourself from her room and shut the door behind you, as though you can trap the memory of last night inside.

You can’t.

Neither you nor Rose mention the night before, even as you sit together and cut into freezer burnt waffles that the toaster couldn’t quite thaw, and yet it lies between you like a sleeping tiger: dormant, hulking, and easily roused.

You eat your waffles in silence.

 

 

Jane arrives without any warning. It’s a Wednesday. The air is crisp and chill and smells like the night you and she clung to each other on that first hoverboard ride.

Rose invites her in, ushers you both into the living room, sets a steeping tea pot on the table, and then absconds to leave you sitting across from Jane in palpable silence. Traitor. You huff and yank the hood of your sweatshirt over your head. Jerk.

The way Jane looks at you is the way one might look at a three-legged puppy. You’re not broken! You’re not pitiful! You want to knock the teapot off the table and kick the foot of the sofa and rage throughout the house because you can’t stand the way her mouth creases into a sad smile.

She apologizes, and that makes you angrier. Then you get mad at yourself for being mad at Jane - sweet Janey whose lips are sweet and who smells sweeter, like cake batter that you want to dip your finger in to steal a taste - and it’s just a vicious cycle, really, but you can’t help the way the heat swells inside of you and rushes to your head and makes your mouth taste like copper or blood.

You accept her apology, albeit with gritted teeth. You don’t push her away when she moves to sit beside you. You don’t even flinch when she pats your knee and then pulls you close for a hug. But the entire time, you are simmering, you are burning, and it is a relief when Jane finally stands and bids you farewell. You show her to the door and even twist your mouth into some sort of smile. You hum acknowledgment when she says that the two of you must catch up more soon.

You close the door when she turns away. Then you kick the door. Then you punch the door. And you punch it a couple more times for good measure, until your knuckles are swollen and red and they hurt as much as your insides do.

Rose must have glided down the stairs because you don’t hear her until she’s just behind you, speaking your name the way you always wanted your mother to. She rubs your back and moves closer, shooshing you as you slam a palm against the door.

You snarl and shrug off her touch. “What are you, my moirail?” you snap. You finally turn around to look at her, and she has it, too - that fucking smile, the three-legged puppy look.

You can’t help yourself. You shove her, hard, with both hands against her shoulders.

She staggers back, nearly falls, but catches herself on the banister of the staircase. Her brow furrows, and you relish the way her lips purse briefly in consternation and then settle in a stiff line, accentuated with a cocked brow; the way her face freezes over like a chill driven by a god-awful wind.

Rose straightens up. She takes a step forward, preparing some verbal assault, so you cross the rest of the distance and shove her again. This time she trips over her own feet, trying to regain her balance, and lands heavily on her butt.

As dignified as Rose usually pretends to be, that’s all it takes for you to both devolve into a wrestling, snarling mess. You don’t expect her to launch herself at your legs, so you don’t even have time to protest before she’s yanked your feet out from under you. Your back hits the carpet and knocks the breath out of you. Your lungs have barely recovered when you tangle your legs around her, pinning her to the floor.

She manages to shake you mostly off and get halfway back to her feet, so you flip yourself around. You grab her shoulders and wrestle her back to the floor, leveraging all your weight against her.

Rose reaches up to snag her fingers in your hair. Tears spring unbidden to your eyes as her grip threatens to rip a fistful out by the roots. You swing a leg around to straddle her and brace a hand against her chest, keeping her pinned, while you pry her fingers out of your hair with your other hand. She gets dangerously close to rolling you off of her, but after a few moments of struggle, you have both of her wrists in your hands, locked against the rough carpet.

Rose thrashes against you until, chest heaving, she relents to your advantage and to the rugburn scouring her arms. You can feel that your victorious grin is a little too feral, a little too unhinged, but you smile all the same. She sneers in return.

The tension shivers between you and Rose as you both catch your breath, frozen in the same position. You. Straddling her. Her wrists pinned over her head. Her face flushed with exertion. Eyes almost hooded, dark with heat.

You kiss her before you can pause to think about it. She meets you halfway, neck craned up, and your mouths surge together. Your teeth knock against hers, but it doesn’t even matter. Neither of you pulls back. Your lips move against each other in wet heat, breath abandoned in favor of an unrelenting pace. You nip her lower lip and then lathe it with your tongue. She bites your upper lip harder and isn’t so kind.

The kiss continues on in a seamless rush until you’ve moved one hand to fist in her hair, your other still loosely pressing her wrists against the floor; until her hips twitch upwards every time you bite the smooth curve of her neck; until your pelvis is grinding against hers and you’re both rutting like animals in heat.

It’s Rose’s first moan that stops you both cold. You’ve wormed a knee between her legs to press against the juncture of her thighs and seized her earlobe between your lips, and maybe it’s the pressure at her core or the heat of your breath against her ear that makes her gasp out your name like a hallelujah.

You stop, mouth hovering millimeters from her skin, as she cuts off the tail of the “y” in sudden realization.

You sit up, finally releasing her wrists, and rest back on your haunches. You don’t want to meet her eyes at first, but you can feel Rose’s stare burning into you. You relent - after all, you probably owe her that much, at least a glance - and you’re the one trapped this time.

“We should probably talk about that,” Rose says from where she still lies prone underneath you. Her eyes are like fucking gems, faceted and each face giving a different glimpse into her head. You force yourself to look away, focusing on the hollow of her neck, because you feel your cheeks growing red at the way her stare digs into you.

“Sorry I shoved you,” you apologize, but you don’t really mean it. Not yet.

“Is that all?” Rose arches an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” You begin to leverage your weight off her, but she moves her hands to your hips to stop you.

You turn your head, trying to erase her from even your peripheral vision because okay, this has waded way too far into weird new territory, but her voice draws you back again. “I’m not particularly sorry.”

Then she drops her hands from your waist. You climb to your feet and offer her a hand. She takes it, dragging herself off the floor with your support. You can see where purple bruises have welled up at her wrists, but fortunately, Rose doesn’t seem too concerned as she straightens out her clothes.

You mutter something about taking a nap. Her smile this time is more like a smirk than before. You abscond before her cocked eyebrow can arch any higher and float off of her forehead.

 


End file.
